Deal With H-P Paves New Future for Old Software

Hewlett-Packard has agreed to let someone else shape the future of a historic piece of software.

The computer maker agreed to let a small Massachusetts company take over further development of OpenVMS, an operating system that originated at Digital Equipment Corp. in 1977. DEC no longer exists, but its technology has lived for years under H-P’s ownership and still has passionate users.

VMS Software, based not far from DEC’s original headquarters, said Thursday it will enhance the software so that users will be able to benefit from faster chips from Intel. H-P last year said it would support OpenVMS through 2020, but not on hardware using an upgraded line of chips that promise noticeable performance increases.

A VAX computer, made by Digital Equipment Corp.

Duane Harris/VMS Software Inc.

VMS Chief Executive Duane Harris said that H-P decision stunned organizations that use the software to run sensitive applications, in places like stock exchanges, manufacturing lines and chemical plants.

“Everybody was in a panic,” Harris said. Users felt they “suddenly had no future.”

VMS stands for virtual memory system, a technology for handling data that became a hallmark of DEC’s VAX minicomputers. Harris and other fans of OpenVMS say it remains much more impervious to crashes than more recent programs like Linux, which is used to run most large websites.

Companies that have written their own software based on OpenVMS for specific computing tasks often don’t possess the underlying source code that would allow them to adapt those programs for newer operating systems, Harris said. “It would cost millions to move,” he said.

The DEC software was adapted to work on its Alpha chips and later Intel’s Itanium, the microprocessors selected by H-P to power three lines of high-end computers. That strain of technology, which H-P helped develop, is completely different than the Intel x86 chips that became popular in personal computers and smaller servers.

Itanium, unfortunately, found few customers beyond H-P and became a financial drain on Intel, to the point that H-P wound up paying the chip maker to keep developing the technology. Intel has introduced new models at a much slower pace than its x86 chip line.

Under the deal with H-P, VMS by 2015 plans to support OpenVMS on a chip dubbed Poulson that represents the latest upgrade to the Itanium line. But the long-term mission is to adapt the software for Intel’s x86 chips, a technology shift that would make much more rapid performance increases available to OpenVMS users.

Harris admits that not every customer program may be able to take advantage of the other Intel chips. But he believes VMS can carry out the programming work and it will pay off for many users.